The Apostle Paul

Colossians 1:1-2

Col-003

The apostle Paul was the apostle who has been recognized by God to be the missionary to the Gentiles with the Word of God to them. For three years he was in Ephesus, a base of information to the conversion of many people in the Lycus Valley, a hundred miles east of the city of Ephesus. There were the Colossian Christians. Somebody brought them the Word and they became believers. The Christians in Colossae were being contaminated, however, by some false doctrines. The Colossian Christians were very foolishly accepting the heresies which were given to them, and the apostle was countering that. Paul himself, we pointed out, was born one to three A.D. in Tarsus of Cilicia in Asia Minor. He lived in a very cosmopolitan town. It was a place of commerce and of learning, and it was the capital of Cilicia. Paul's father was a Roman citizen, so Paul was born free as a Roman.

Paul's education and background

Paul meets Jesus on the road to Damascus

Paul had created his own reality about Christ, and now that false reality simply crashed down on his head. Paul had lacked the spiritual reality that consequently made him out of touch with reality. And when you're out of touch with reality, you're crazy. That is the primary feature of a person who is insane. They're out of touch with reality, and Paul was out of touch and, therefore, he was a determined oppressor of the believers. Paul was told by Jesus Christ following his experience on that Damascus Road to go into the city where he would lodge in the home of a man named Judas. Judas was a representative of the Sanhedrin, and he was awaiting Paul's arrival. He lived on a street named Straight. Paul is physically blinded as he stands up from that experience with Christ. He goes to the home of Judas; he goes to the room, and he sits there meditating on what was happening to him.

He neither drank anything nor ate anything, Acts 9:12 tells us, for three days. Now came the time for the road back to reality. He is a blinded penitent. He goes to the guest room to fast and to pray and to meditate about Jesus. Paul is shocked about how wrong he had been about Jesus and what suffering he had brought to the Lord's people, the Christians, all in the name of religion. While he was overwhelmed by the enormity of what he had done, the love of Christ brought him great comfort. As the hours pass, Paul realized that he had been mentally wrong about Jesus, that he'd been emotionally hostile to God, and that he had opposed the will of God. While insane spiritually, Paul had no doubt that Jesus was the Messiah savior. Now he had no doubt that Jesus was alive because he had seen Him alive in heaven.

He knew that Jesus hung on the cross not as a sign of God's curse, but as a sign of His grace and love for Paul, the persecutor. The Old Testament law says that one of the signs that a person is under the curse of God, is that he hangs on the wood. That's the expression that was used. He is hung on the wood. He is hung out to die by putting him upon the cross as it were. And when Jesus was nailed to the cross, the Jews said, "There's your sign, there's your evidence that He is a malefactor. God opposes Him and God is bringing Him to judgment." But Paul says, "No I was wrong. The reason He was on the wood was because He bore my sins." So, Paul realized he had now absolute righteousness because of Christ hanging on that wood. He'd had this apart from any human doing, and it had nothing to do with the Mosaic law.

Jesus sends Ananias to Paul

Ananias arrives at the house where Paul is staying. He goes up to the room, meets Paul, and introduces himself. Ananias tells Paul that he has come to restore his sight to him. In Acts chapter 9, the incident is recorded for us. Acts 9:17-19 "Ananias departed and entered the house and after laying his hands on him, said, 'Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus Who appeared to you on the road by which you are coming, has sent me so that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit." And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales and he regained his sight, and he arose and was baptized, and he took bread and was strengthened. And Ananias tells Paul that Jesus will now teach him some very significant Church age doctrines. These would be recorded and that Paul, in time, would put these things down in writing, and they would become part of the New Testament scriptures."

This is why Paul is such an enormously important man and the effect that he has on mankind because he was the primary agent of producing the New Testament scriptures. We read and he said, "The God of our fathers has appointed you to know His will and to see the righteous one and to hear an utterance from His mouth for you will be a witness for Him to all men of that which we have seen and heard." So, Paul was appointed to do a tremendous work in producing the scriptures. Ananias assured Paul that this would come to pass. Paul's destiny, furthermore, was to be a witness to Jews and Gentiles of all social levels and to bring them to salvation in Christ. Ananias baptized Paul in water to signify his new birth, and joy unspeakable and full of glory filled Saul's soul. He remained in Damascus with the Christians there for several days.

Acts 9:19 tells us, "Time came when he was ready to start witnessing and the impact of his testimony was significant. He stood in the synagogue of Damascus zealously proclaiming Jesus Christ as the resurrected God man, the Messiah savior of Israel." The synagogue was going to be the point from which Paul would operate with the Jews. You could come into a synagogue, you were a Jew, you could stand up, you could speak to the audience. Paul took advantage of that system. And there he came into the congregation of the synagogue. Now everybody expected him to give his sermon about how terrible the Christians were and about how evil they were and about this blasphemous thing that they were doing, worshiping this man Jesus of Nazareth. But Paul's salvation testimony in the synagogue was something quite different. Instead, he proclaimed Christ as the Messiah of Israel.

Paul stuns Jews by proclaiming that Jesus is the Christ

What a change! They had expected to hear from the Jerusalem High Priest representative. But, instead, they heard from a representative of Jesus Christ, Paul, in utter amazement. However, the Jews did not accept his testimony. That stunned him now. He was so sure that once he explained to them what had happened, what had taken place on the Damascus Road, that they would believe. There was no doubt in his mind that they would respond. As often we are when we give the word to people, when we speak to people that we are concerned with. And instead, they just simply dismiss what we say. We go to the word of God, and we say, "Here it is. This is what God has said." And we think that having done that, there'd be no question people would believe. Instead, they just turned their backs upon it. And we have a hard time understanding how they can do that.

Well, Paul was really disappointed that the Jews did not accept his testimony because, after all, they knew him well. They knew how antagonistic he had been to Christians. He wasn't some nut. He was a man of education and knowledge and substance and devotion. They should have paid attention to him, but they did not. And the result was that what they decided to do was now to plot against him, to do away with him. So, Paul now realized that he needed to get away for safety. And, furthermore, to learn about Jesus Christ and His teachings. He knew a lot about the Old Testament, but he did not know things about the New Testament Church age truth. And that's why it is always a bad thing when people try to promote Christianity by bringing in somebody who becomes a Christian, and he's a famous entertainer, he's a famous athletic star, he's a famous something.

Jesus teaches Paul the Church Age Doctrine

Paul studies grace

Jews plot to murder Paul

But the plan became known. The Christians who knew the plot quickly took Paul and put him in a Christian home, a home which was on the wall so that when you open the window and you look down, you were looking over the wall down to the outside beyond the wall of the city. And that night they put him in a fish basket, probably one that they had scrubbed clean and hadn't used recently, but they literally stuck him in a fish basket and lowered him carefully out the window, down to the ground over the wall. While the assassins were back there watching the main gate, He was making a flanking movement in order to escape. And thus Paul, early in his missionary career, learned what it was to be persecuted for Christ. But he also learned what it was not to be forsaken by God.

Paul escapes Damascus in a fish basket

There they still feared him because they knew him by reputation. They thought perhaps he might be a spy for the Sanhedrin. Acts 9:26 says, "And when he had come to Jerusalem, he was trying to associate with the disciples, and they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple." People had heard of his so-called terrific, magnificent conversion, but then he dropped out of sight. All these years they hadn't heard anything more about him. So suddenly he shows up, and they're on guard. Finally, however, a man named Joseph Barnabas, a respected Christian leader, came to Paul's rescue by extending to him the right hand of Christian fellowship. Acts 9:27: "But Barnabas took hold of him and brought him to the apostles and described to him how he had seen the Lord on the road and that he had talked to him and how at Damascus he had spoken out boldly in a name of Jesus."

So, Barnabas vouched for the genuineness of Paul's conversion, and he commended him now to the leader of the apostolic band. And Peter himself responded with a positive reception of Paul as a brother in Christ. Galatians 1:18. "Then three years later I came up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him 15 days." Now this was a wonderful 15-day period for Paul because he was able to sit down with somebody for the first time who is an actual eyewitness of Jesus Christ. Paul had the disadvantage that he had never met Christ, he had never seen him, he had never listened to him, he had never dealt with him. Suddenly he's able to sit down with Peter, who could speak to him in detail about Jesus. And while Paul listened, he carefully matched what Peter said against the Old Testament scripture to confirm that what Peter was saying was true.

Paul spends two weeks with Peter

And the result was by speaking for this two-week period with Peter, he, in effect, had an eyewitness acquaintance with Jesus from Peter on which he would now base his own preaching. Because what Peter gave him was the very words of Jesus Christ accurately. The Jews did not paraphrase the scripture. The Jews consider that improper. To paraphrase what scripture said is to include man's words with the Holy Spirit's words. So, we are reluctant to use certain translations of scripture such as the NIV, the New International Version, because the New International Version is partly a paraphrase. It will throw words in that are interpretive. It will read, for example, the word Sarxs, which is the word flesh, and it will translate it as the sin nature. It'll do several things like that which is mostly true interpretation. It's accurate, and for some people it might be helpful, but it is borderline now that it is not an actual representation of what is in the original Greek and is not a regular translation of scripture.

Now of course, the most horrendous example of paraphrasing the word of God and putting in man's words with God's words is the Living Bible. The Living Bible is strictly a man who sat on the train between Wheaton and Chicago going to work daily. And as he rode along, he read the scripture, meditated upon it, got in mind what it said, and then said it in his words. And, in no way is that Bible the word of God. Now it's okay to read that and it's okay to publish it and sell it as long as you say that this is a commentary instead of calling it the Bible. So, Paul had, in effect, the same experience that he had sat there and listened to Jesus the way Peter did because Peter conveyed to him the great words of truth.

People in those days had a great capacity that they developed for memorizing. They had a great capacity for remembering details because they couldn't write things down. Paul received this instruction. He had, therefore, a kind of an eyewitness acquaintance and he received the words accurately. He didn't meet any of the other apostles. He did meet the Lord's half-brother James, who is the leader of the Church in Jerusalem. Galatians 1:19 tells us, "But Peter's the only real apostle that Paul met. Peter did not at this time fully grasp that the gospel was for the Gentiles." Paul had already grasped that the gospel was for the Gentiles as well as the Jews. The incident at Joppa, which clarified this for Peter, was still something like seven years in the future. And Peter had not yet put this together to discover, to realize that the gospels for the Gentiles. Peter was still of the opinion that only the Jews were to receive this gospel message.

His brother, the half-brother of Jesus, James, was a very devoted Jewish leader. He was very devoted to the mosaic law in his Christianity. Well, Paul went about Jerusalem boldly proclaiming to these Jews with a Greek culture, we call them Hellenistic Jews. He proclaimed to them that Jesus Christ was indeed the Messiah. Acts 9:28-29: "And he was with them moving about freely in Jerusalem, speaking out boldly in the name of the Lord. And he was talking and arguing with the Hellenistic Jews, but they were attempting to put him to death." Now the apostle Paul was capable, because of his background and education, to speak to the Hellenistic world. That was the sophisticated world. But he could talk to them. He had the background; he had the understanding, and Paul was in Jerusalem proclaiming Christ. And the testimony concerning Jesus was, in effect, a continuation of what Steven had started. Stephen, who had been silenced (killed) with Paul's help.

Now of all things, Paul comes to Jerusalem, and he picks up where Steven left off. The Jews in Jerusalem did their thing that they always do. They proceeded to plot again to silence him. That has to be a big strain. Every time he goes someplace and proclaims the word of God, the next thing they want to do is to find a way to execute him. Acts 22:17-18: "And it came about when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple that I fell into a trance and I saw him saying to me, 'Make Hast and get out of Jerusalem quickly because they will not accept your testimony about me.'" So, Jesus warns Paul that they're out to get him again. And Paul again was incredulous that the Jews would not be impressed with his testimony. Acts 22:19-20: Paul says, "And I said, Lord, they themselves understand that in one synagogue after another I used to imprison and beat those who believed in Him. And when the eyewitness of the blood of Steven was being shed, I also was standing by, approving, and watching out for the cloaks of those who were slaying him."

Jews do not accept Paul's teachings

Paul, who had once been the pride and the joy of his family, was now an embarrassment to them and an outcast. Paul's ministry to the Gentiles of Tarsus was not welcomed by his family. It may be that at this time is when he received some of those scourings that he records in scripture. It was common that when somebody, a Jew in the synagogue community, was guilty of something that they considered her improper, they would simply whip him. He would be put under scouring by the leaders of the synagogue because anybody who would not behave in the proper way, was disciplined in this way. And it may be that his talk about Jesus, his insistence about His resurrection may have been part of the time when he was punished by these leaders when he was back home in Tarsus.

He was indeed hated for the sake of Christ, and he was suffering now as Jesus had told him that he would be. But Paul never denied the Lord and he did not compromise with Judaism. Paul spent this as a time of waiting, but he put it to good use because he spent his time now to develop a strong spiritual maturity structure in his soul. This had to be done for him to really be ready for his missionary work and the great demand that that would be. He was now talking; he was now organizing. He was writing out and codifying all the information that Christ had given him about Church Age truth. And he was getting his spiritual maturity structure in place and in operation. As was usual with the Pharisees, we think that he probably was married to a girl which was a custom in that day, and his wife either died or when he proceeded to return now to his missionary work, she may have abandoned him. She may have refused to go with him as a Christian. And that is a problem that off that sometimes happens when somebody becomes a Christian, they're married to somebody who's non-Christian or incapable of going with what is Christian. The apostle Paul gave us instruction I Corinthians 7, that if you find yourself as a believer, but you marry somebody who refuses to accept Christ. Now you find yourself one of the sheep of God associated in a close tie of marriage with a goat, and therefore your position is twofold. You stay with that person, and you live as peacefully as you can with that individual hoping that they will accept Christ and be saved. Otherwise if that person refuses to live with you as a Christian and abandons you, then you are free to walk away from that person. That's the principle of abandonment that then breaks a marriage bond.

Paul's later years and death

Definition of apostle

One, it is one of the communication gifts which were given by God until a New Testament was written along with the gift of the prophet. It's a gift of the highest authority over local Churches. An apostle could walk into any Church and tell them what to do. An apostle had the very authority of Christ delegated to them. A pastor teacher has authority only in one single congregation. He has authority within that group of believers, but he has no authority in some sister Church that may be nearby. However, an apostle could walk in and exercise his authority anywhere and especially over the Churches that he had founded. So, Paul, this great and special man chosen by God through such a marvelous experience of salvation, was immediately constituted an Apostle, one of the spiritual gifts. And he's an apostle, we're told, of Jesus Christ. The apostles were the Lord's official witnesses. That's what the Apostle's duty was, to be an official witness. John 15:27 says, "And you will bear witness also because you have been with me from the beginning." You could not be an apostle if you had not seen Jesus Christ alive and then seen Him raised from the dead. That was one of the prerequisites to being an Apostle. And you had to be with Him to have seen Him in life, to seen Him dead, to see that He was back alive again. Acts 10:39, and we are witnesses of all the things He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. And they also put him to death by hanging Him on a cross. This was a testimony of the Apostles to what had been done to Jesus. Now this was sovereignly given. You cannot pray to have the gift of an apostle.

There are some Churches which claim that they have apostolic succession passing it on from one person to the next person. But that is not true. It's a spiritual gift. And like all spiritual gifts they have to be given by God himself. Paul reserves the title of Apostle; you'll see here only to himself. He is going to include his associate Timothy in this greeting. But it does not indicate that Timothy is an Apostle. Paul is an official Apostle. So, he writes on his own with divine authority, which the Colossian Church must obey. Paul is chosen by God to be an apostle and he was chosen to be that long before he was saved. So, the apostle is a gift of tremendous importance, and, therefore, what the Apostle Paul says is a true word of God. His letters that he wrote produced the New Testament scriptures, and they were under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and he was raised up to provide this.

Now the idea of being an apostle by some desire on your part today is false, as I say, because you have to be able to see Christ alive. And there are, therefore, no apostles today and no apostolic authority. Sometime ago in the past we had a lady who was visiting, who came out of one of the great denominations today, which has bishops, bishops who are apostles, apostles by the official laying on of the hands of other higher officials who have received their apostolic authority, and so on. And when I pointed out that there are no apostles today because there is no one today who has been alive to see Jesus Christ risen from the dead; therefore, they do not qualify and, therefore, there is no apostolic authority. There is no apostolic succession. And when she left that night, she really took issue with me. And I'm surprised and I said, "Well, I read the scripture to you tonight. You know that you had to see Christ alive from the dead to be an apostle, and there's nobody who can fulfill that requirement today." And she, instead of saying, "That's right, thank you for enlightening me," tossed her head and said something snide and walked out the door and crushed me because what was she faced with? She's part of a huge denomination. And when her bishop stands up, he speaks with authority of an apostle. And, as we have indicated, this is a very great authority. The closest thing you can come to being a Pope was to be an apostle, and, therefore, to claim that today is the arrogance and extreme. Now, the gift of the apostle is one of the things, therefore, that we need to understand because Paul has his authority, he can speak for God. We will look at that in more detail next time.

Closing prayer

God, our Father, we thank you so much for this, the word, for what we have learned, and for the great apostolic gift. We are thrilled by the life of the Apostle Paul. Dr. John E. Danish

Dr. John E. Danish, 1995

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